Wednesday, April 11, 2012

La Comida

So far, the food in Barcelona has been fabulous. I've tried some new things and I've had some interesting combinations of foods that I already liked. For example, one day for lunch, Amparo made me a fried egg with tomato sauce on top of white rice. Sounds pretty weird, but trust me, it was delicious.

Today for lunch, Amparo made a huge pan of paella. It was so good! Everything scrumptious you can imagine (chicken, potatoes, vegetables), all mixed together in a warm pile of rice. Perfection.

We have "pan con tomate" at every lunch and dinner. The type of bread varies from day-to-day. When Amparo packs me sandwiches for lunch, the bread is usually smeared with tomato like this too. 

Amparo explained to me that fruit is really inexpensive in Barcelona for reasons that I didn't understand in Spanish. But I like it. There are colorful fruit market stands on almost every block. I have some type of fruit after every meal. I especially like the pears. Today we had fresh strawberries!


A few more notes about Spanish food and related topics:
• People here refer to milk chocolate as "chocolate moreno" (brown chocolate) and dark chocolate as "chocolate negro" (black chocolate). Interesting.
• For some reason, nobody drinks the tap water in Barcelona, so Amparo and everyone else buys bottled water in huge quantities. It seems pretty wasteful to me, but what do I know.
• The grocery stores have normal grocery carts, but they also have the plastic baskets, similar to those in the US, except they have wheels! Here's a photo of my friend Rob pulling our basket of groceries last weekend in Ibiza:

1 comment:

  1. Pan con Tomate (Bread with Tomato) is sometimes called Pan a la Catalana in other parts of Spain. It is one of the simplest, the most well-loved, the most widely eaten and the most famous dishes from Cataluña. In Catalan, it is called pa amb tomaquet and in Spanish, pan con tomate.

    Thanks, Google. I can't wait to try this!

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